The Heritage of America's Thanksgiving

The Pilgrims’ Journey from England to Holland

And there we go. Okay, so I'm Terry Cameriselle and I'm here on behalf of Creation Fellowship Santee. We're a group of friends bound by our common agreement that the creation account, as told in Genesis, is a true depiction of how God created the world and all life in just six days, about 6 ,000 years ago.

We've been meeting in this online platform since May of 2020 and we've been blessed with a wide variety of speakers, some doctors, some authors, pastors, apologists, all sorts of people who love the Lord and have a message to share.

You can find links to most of those past presentations by typing in tinyurl .com forward slash cfs archives. That's c like creation, f like fellowship, s like Santee, and the word archives. While you're there, we also have a list of our upcoming speakers, although it's only through 2023 and we just have one more left after tonight, although we are working on booking speakers for 2024.

We will be back in January. But one last thing, you can also email us at creationfellowshipsantee at gmail .com so that you can get on our email list. We promise not to spam and we'll send you links to all of the upcoming speakers.

So tonight we're very blessed. We have a variety, not just of speakers, but of topics. We love to study creation science, but sometimes we also study other theology topics and even current events. For these last two meetings here in 2023, we've decided to do some holiday themed ones.

So pay attention and make plans to attend on December 7th for a Christmas themed one. But this one tonight is going to be more about Thanksgiving. So we're blessed to have Ryan Cox with us. Ryan Cox is a worldview minister serving with Creation Truth Foundation in Noble, Oklahoma.

He actually has several degrees in history and science and he's a dinosaur expert. In fact, we had his colleague Matt Miles on earlier in the year to speak about dinosaurs. But tonight we invited him because of his love of history and love of the studying of the foundation of America.

So he's going to talk to us about America's Thanksgiving, the heritage of America's Thanksgiving. So with that, I'm turning it over to you, Ryan. Well, thank you very much. And I very.

Much appreciate the invitation to come and share with you. I was a long-time history teacher. That was my passion growing up. And so I got my education in history and teacher certification taught for seven years.

And one of my favorite things that was impressed upon me in secular universities was how questionable historical events are when you actually go through and look at the evidence that is available and how we write our history in our history books.

A lot of it's pretty good and dependable, but sometimes there's some guesswork or new discoveries that enlighten us as to what actually took place in the past. But as a teacher, we always had to be on a rotation of getting new textbooks, getting revised textbooks with new information.

Well, as a Christian, I kind of smirked at that because I have a history book that I've read since I was a child, taught to me by my parents, that is still on its first edition. It has never needed to be updated.

And that is the history book given to us by our creator God. And so I believe it is absolute history from the very first chapter to the very end. These things really did take place or will take place as prophesied by our Lord.

And so I appreciate the opportunity to share history. So I teach history for seven years in public education and then went into full-time ministry. And I'm now with Creation Truth Foundation. This foundation was established by Dr. G. Thomas Sharp, who has retired.

And that's when I came on as part of the ministry. You met my colleague, Matt Miles, who is the president, and he got to share with you about dinosaurs. So Dr. Sharp traveled the country all over sharing about dinosaurs and the reliability and the true history that is found in even the creation account of the entire book of Genesis.

But there was one thing that also was a passion of his, and that was American history. And he believed that America, even though it was founded upon biblical principles and a Judeo-Christian ethic, it too has been, as Doc would say, evolutionized and paganized.

And that's why we've seen some more trying times in America's past history. And so he would speak about that. Well, when I joined the ministry, Matt said, hey, we need somebody to pick up that part of the ministry as well and share some history.

And so we have developed a program that we call Our American Founding. And so I'm going to switch over to my other screen now. There we go. And so Our American Founding, and we have however many presentations you would like for us to do when I come and share on that.

And so this one particularly is the pilgrims. And so somehow I ended up with a P theme. The pilgrims, the patriots, the protected, the president, and the preachers, and the proclamation, however many of those we get to do.

I want to share a little bit of the pilgrims with you this evening as that would be setting us up for our Thanksgiving time. And so to do that, this is the pilgrims journey actually begins about the exact same time as Jamestown was being settled.

Jamestown, as you know, was settled in 1607. Well, back in England at that very time, Archbishop Tobias Matthew, he, under the charge of the king, had begun raiding homes in Scrooby and Nottinghamshire, imprisoning those who would not adhere to the Church of England.

Well, there was a group of separatists, not necessarily Puritans. Puritans sought to try to purify the Church of England. Separatists decided it's a lost cause. And so we're just going to separate and worship on our own, and we're going to do it based on how we read and understand the Scriptures, not based on somebody dictating it to us.

And so this group, led by men such as William Brewster and John Robinson and Richard Clifton, had begun worshiping the Lord according to their own personal understanding of the Scriptures and not by the decrees of the king.

They decided that because their homes were being raided and the pamphlets and literature they were producing were being frowned upon and was serving as opportunity for them to be imprisoned, that they should try to leave the country.

That, however, was also illegal unless you had permission. You would gain permission from the government. Well, in 1607, they attempted to try to do so anyway and go over to Holland. Holland was a province of the Netherlands, which is there on the northern part of the mainland of Europe, wedged between France and Germany up there.

And so they were going to try to get over there and be able to worship in freedom. But when they attempted that in 1607, the captain of the ship that they had chartered betrayed them and turned them in, and so the men were arrested.

They were treated leniently, though, according to what was written in a journal by a young man who had joined the separatists named William Bradford. Well, they decided the following spring in 1608 to try again and see if we can get to freedom.

And they wanted to take their families, obviously, but they decided that to try to draw less attention to themselves of a big group of people, of entire families, men, women, and children, getting on a boat and trying to go over there, that they would split up.

So they were going to go 60 miles up the coast, further from where they had first done their attempt, because that's a pretty long distance, especially back then, when you didn't have a car or a train to get there.

And so they thought that'd be a good way to try to get there. The women and children journeyed down a little river to the coast, and the men would walk overland, so they didn't see these families trying to escape England.

They would then board a Dutch ship that they had chartered once they all arrived and hurried to get on and leave. Well, the women and children arrived a day earlier than the men. They made pretty good time going down that little river.

Well, they sat there kind of on the coast, and they didn't see anybody was there, and they didn't want to sit out there in the open, plus the waves tossing back and forth was getting them a little seasick.

So they decided to go back up the river and kind of hide out there for a while as they waited for the men to arrive. But the tide went out, and in the morning, it hadn't come back, and their boats got stuck in the mud, and they weren't able to get down there.

The men arrived that next morning, seen no one, but they're sure they're going to show up at any time, and the boat is there, and the captain is there waiting for them to get on. So a few of them start getting on board the ship and get ready to go.

In the midst of that, a great company, is how it's written in the journals, begins to arrive. They hear them coming to arrest them. Well, the men who are on the boat are kind of stuck on there. Some of them who are on the dock jump off and run to try to hide, and the Dutch captain weighs anchor, and he takes off with these men who realize they're leaving, and they don't have their families with them.

They don't have their wives and their children with them, so they tell him, get back, get back, we got to go back, and the captain's like, no, I ain't getting caught by these, by the authorities, and they kept pleading with him, no, you got to go back, you got to go back, and so finally, he says, okay, he relented, and he goes to turn around, and right when that happens, a thunderstorm strikes up out of nowhere.

Lightning, thunder, winds like crazy, choppy, choppy, choppy waves that they can't get through. They try to turn around. They cannot get back. The storm will last for 14 days. For many of those days, they could see neither the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars.

They didn't even know where they were at half the time. The captain believed God was punishing him for not returning the men to their families. However, if this storm had not suddenly risen and struck at just that right moment, and kept those men from returning to their families and being arrested, there may not have been an America as we know it today, for when the authorities arrived and found only women and children, and some of the men who had ran off, because the women and children didn't show up and finally get there, they felt a little awkward trying to arrest children and women, so they kind of detained them for a while, asked them questions, and said, okay, well, you can go on home, but don't do this again.

Well, the husbands and fathers who had made it, they did finally arrive in Holland, were able to acquire some land and purchase some homes, and they sent for their families, and they all then eventually finally made it to Amsterdam, there in the Netherlands.

The Mayflower Compact and the Purpose of the Voyage

Well, they decide after a little bit to move to the town of Leiden, and from there, William Brewster, along with Thomas Brewer and Edward Winslow and others, began working a printing press they acquired, and they began sending a lot of literature, lots of publications back to England that were pretty critical of the king and his church and the religion, and were calling on people to shun that and instead return simply back to the Bible, the pure plain teachings of God's word, just use that.

Well, it got so irritating that King James eventually sent out an international manhunt for these men. In addition, after being there for what would end up being about 12 years of residency, the separatist children had kind of really started learning the Dutch customs and language, and for them, they felt like they were losing some of their English heritage, because they still were proud of their English history and their heritage, and they thought the Dutch were a little more secular maybe than they decided, and so they figured they needed to pursue a new means to freedom.

They went about it the new way that this was all happening in the 17th century, in the 1600s, and they acquired a land patent from the Virginia Company, and financing from, this is one of my favorite parts, the company that would finance it and seek a profit from this new colony, if they got the permission to go to the new world, to the American colonies, that company was called the Merchant Adventurers.

I'm sure they had great commercials to get everybody to join. Anyway, so they're going to seek a profit for this. Well, deacons John Carver and Robert Cushman, they went and handled the negotiations, because they could kind of get in and be with a little more subtlety than William Brewster, who was kind of well known and was in hiding, because the king had sent people all the way over to the Netherlands to try to find these guys, and the company, to make sure things ran smoothly, they were going to send their people as well.

Men like Miles Standish, who would be the military, and Christopher Martin, who would be the governor of the colony, and so they all get ready. They charter a boat that they're going to take and travel across the ocean to the new world, and you probably all know the name of that boat.

It was the, yes, the Speedwell. Very good. Everybody who said Speedwell got it correct. Mayflower. No, no, the Speedwell. The Speedwell was actually purchased by the efforts of the pilgrims. Many of them sold their homes and their lands to get on the Speedwell.

On their way over to England, where they're going to meet up with another boat that's been chartered, not purchased, but chartered by separatists that had been recruited, and were going to leave their homes as well.

Well, on their way over there, the Speedwell developed a bunch of leaks. Some claimed it was just an oversized ship, that the mast wasn't right. Some said it was just wasn't built right. Either way, the boat's not going to make it.

This is not good. So, they get to England, and they're like, what do we do? We can't go on this boat, but we've sold our homes and our land. We don't know how we're going to get there. So, they, what do we do?

Well, the people who had chartered this other boat said, you take it. We can stay here at home, and we'll catch the next ship and go over. So, that's what they decide to do. And so, they're going to go over, and they get on this boat called the Mayflower.

And that's how they got on that boat. So, the Puritans from Holland, I'm sorry, the Separatists from Holland, they're going to go on that, and the other people are going to stay there. And so, they cram a total of 102 passengers with about 30 or so crew that run the ship, and they're going to depart.

This is kind of funny, Plymouth, England on September 6th, 1620, and they're heading for the Hudson River Bay in what is today New York. As you can see, it was just a little bit cramped. All they had was just this deck right here where they would be on with no restroom facilities, no laundry mats, no really much of anything, no nice, really good kitchen or stuff.

And so, they're going to wear the same set of clothes the entire way there. If people get sick and whatever, you're going to be right beside them the whole way, swaying back and forth on the boat. Not a pleasant trip at all.

You had on the boat 49 from the Leiden congregation who had sold their homes and were coming this way. You had 13 apprentices or servants who were with them, plus 31 individuals or family members who had been recruited by the merchant adventurers who were not part of the congregation.

So, in their journals, in their letters, they refer to them as the strangers because they were strangers to their faith. And then, there were about six apprentices or servants. Edward Winslow recorded that two dogs also made the trip, an English Mastiff and an English Springer Spaniel.

And so, they all get on there. Now, you can see on the screen there on the boat how cramped it is. Well, William Brewster insisted that they bring along with them the printing press, because he wants to send more literature in freedom back to England to try to win over the people to follow the scriptures.

Problem was, it was broke. And the question is, well, where are you going to get parts in the new world? Well, I guess you have to have them shipped over. And so, they're like, just wait for another time to bring the printing press.

We don't need the printing press this time. It's broke. You won't be able to do anything anyway. Wait until they come over with the parts you need to fix it, whatever. He insisted. It was put on the boat somewhere.

They crammed it on there, and they brought the printing press along, even though it wasn't working at the time. Now, as I said, the trip, absolutely challenging. Just horrid conditions. I cannot imagine.

It seemed to storm the whole trip. You were stuck below for two months with bad food, tainted water, no bathrooms. The one said it closed. And just over halfway, the ship gets damaged. William Bradford wrote, after they had enjoyed fair winds and weather for a season, they were encountered many times with crosswinds and met with many fierce storms with which the ship was shrouded, shaken, and her upper works made very leaky.

And one of the main beams in the mid ships was bowed and cracked, which put them in some fear that the ship could not be able to perform the voyage. So some of the chief of the company, perceiving the mariners to fear the sufficiency of the ship, as appeared by their mutterings, they entered into serious consultation with the master and other officers of the ship to consider in time of the danger and rather to return than to cast themselves into a desperate and inevitable peril.

But in examining of all opinions, the master and others affirmed they knew the ship to be strong and firm underwater. And for the buckling of the main beam, there happened to be on the ship, there was a great iron screw the passengers brought out of Holland, which would raise the beam into his place.

Hmm. What big giant iron screw was on the boat that wasn't being used at that time, but somebody had insisted they bring along with them? The giant iron screw of the printing press. If they hadn't had that, they may have decided to turn around and not make the journey.

Well, as Bradford writes there, so they had the giant iron screw to raise the beam into his place, the which being done, the carpenter and master affirmed that with a post put under it, set firm in the lower deck and other ways bound, he would make it sufficient.

So they committed themselves to the will of God and resolved to proceed. And that's how the ship was able to continue on. Now Bradford goes on to note, he said, in sundry of these storms, the winds were so fierce and the sea so high as they could not bear a note of sail.

And in one of them, as they thus lay at whole in a mighty storm, a lusty young man called John Howland coming upon some occasion above the gratings was with a seal of the ship thrown into sea. But it pleased God that he could hold of the top sail halyards, which hung overboard, these big long ropes and rain out at length.

Yet he held his hold, though he was sundry fathoms, I'm trying to read 17th century English here, underwater till he was hauled up by the same rope to the brime of the water. And then with a boat hook and other means got into the ship again and his life saved.

Just kind of showing you how treacherous this journey could be at times. And though he was something ill with it, he, yet he lived many years after and became a profitable member, both in church and commonwealth.

And all this voyage there died, but one of the passengers, which was William Button, a youth servant to Samuel Fuller, when they drew near the coast, he got sick. They got close there to their original landing spot, which they wouldn't end up being there.

They'd go on closer and he died just a day or two, I think it was before they landed at Plymouth. But to admit other things that I may be brief, after long beating at sea, they fell with that land, which is called Cape Cod.

Land was sighted on November 9th, two months after they had set sail. They all ran up on deck and began to praise God for bringing them to the new world. They celebrated so long that Captain Jones had to force them below decks so he could continue operations of the ship.

He's like, stop, stop all your singing and praying, go down. I can't run the ship. They had arrived at Cape Cod, which was north of where they were to settle. They attempted for several days to try to get to where they were supposed to.

They'd set sails to go south, but a strong winter storm would show up. And so they'd have to wait for it to die down. They tried to go down south again. The winds kept them from making any progress. And so they decided, well, we can't go south for some reason.

Somebody's keeping us from doing that. And they floated into Provincetown Harbor of Cape Cod on Saturday, November 11th, 1620. Now this land was out of their patents jurisdiction. The pilgrims see this as an opportunity to draft a new charter, a contract, a government-based, a governing-based contract between them and the strangers, those who were from the merchant adventures, of how they would live in peace.

And since they wrote this compact on the Mayflower, they called it the Mayflower Compact. And this is the famous painting that you've often seen of it. So it provided a social contract between them, between the pilgrims and the tradesmen, the adventurers.

So they would all have an agreed upon terms of how to live peaceably together in this area that was outside of the original patent. And in case you've never read it or seen what it said, this is what it said.

In the name of God, amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord King James, by the grace of God of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, defender of the faith, et cetera, having undertaken for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presence psalmly mutually in the presence of God and one another covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends of force said, and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices from time to time as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony unto which we promise all due submission and obedience and witness whereof we have here under subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the 11th of November and the year of the reign of our sovereign Lord King James of England, France, and Ireland, the 18th and of Scotland, the 54th Anno Domini, 1620.

Now you have read the Mayflower Compact in case you never had before. Now what's really important though, we got to make sure we understand. What did they say was the reason for this trip for coming here to the new world?

The reason I asked that is because my wife, when she was a young lady, her family took a trip to the New England States and went to Boston and went over to where they have the Plymouth Harbor and they're at Cape Cod and went on a recreation of the Mayflower.

They called it Mayflower II. They've taken the tour and I've taken the tour as well but I don't remember this part. Their tour guide specifically said, most people think the pilgrims came here to find religious liberty but that's not really the reason.

The reason they came over here was to start a new colony to make a profit for the merchant adventurers. There was no reason of religious freedom for them coming over here? I recall though in their very own words right here, we have undertaken for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia.

They say in their own words the whole reason for taking this trip is to be able to worship the Lord in freedom and as you've seen already in the history that we've covered, that is entirely the reason why they took this trip.

Just a sad state of the secular education we have sometimes in our country today. Well as I said they arrived there on a Saturday. Well they're all excited and ready to disembark but the next day is Sunday.

It's the Lord's day. They believed that was a day not to do any great task, great work and so they stayed on board the ship to worship, to have their regular observance of the Lord's day and did not unload until the following day on Monday, November 13, 1620.

Now I think about that and I'm thinking if I'd been stuck on that boat for two months I would be desperate to get off at the very soonest possible opportunity but they believed observing the Lord's day was more important.

So finally on Monday, November 13, 1620 the pilgrims set foot in the new world. They explored the land and eventually on December 16th went out to Plymouth Harbor where they settled on a location on December 21st.

However, weather kept them from starting home construction until December 23rd. Now December 23rd and what would eventually become Massachusetts, that's a great time to start building a house. Now the area, not very conducive with the winter that was coming on but so guess where they had to stay most of the time?

They still had to stay most of the time on the ship until they could finally get some every building they got then they can move a few more out there and everything. The area had been called, it's kind of interesting, it had been identified on maps as New Plymouth by this guy who was really good at making maps named John Smith.

You may have heard of him and so he made that map back in 1614 and when he did that he had brought home a native named Squanto who had been living in England for nine years. Well the colonists decided we'll keep the name Plymouth and since we just left Plymouth, England and this is already called Plymouth, we'll call this Plymouth Colony.

Now as I said this winter was harsh with freezing temperatures, disease, not much shelter and of the 130 or so original passengers only 53 would survive to the following November. Of the 18 wives that had come on the trip, 13 died by the end of the following March including William Bradford's own wife, Isaac Allerton.

He lost his wife and now he had his seven, five and three-year-old to care for. 13-year-old Mary Chilton had both her parents die as did 13-year-old Elizabeth Tilly. How would you like to be a 13-year-old stranded with a group of people you've gone to church with but no family clear on the other side of the world in the midst of a winter that you don't know if you're going to survive or not?

12-year-old Samuel Fuller lost both of his parents. Susanna White was pregnant and gave birth to a son on the Mayflower in November while they were anchored in Cape Cod. Her husband would die that winter leaving her with her infant and five-year-old sons to take care of.

She'd be the only surviving widow and she is pictured, I'll show you in the famous painting by Jenny Brownscombe from 1914 in the famous painting of the first Thanksgiving. Despite the almost indescribable, unable to fathom difficulties, they refused to give up.

They did not get back on the Mayflower when it left to go back to England on April 5th. They knew God had called them to be there and that God was not going to give up on them and that this colony could survive if they would just have faith to follow him through this.

Squanto, the Harvest of 1621, and the Problem of Communalism

Well, on March 16th after this winter's coming to an end there in 1621, a man named Samuelset walked into the village. He had learned English when he was captured and then eventually released by English fishermen in present-day Maine but he had this friend named Squanto who was just mentioned who had been captured in 1605 and returned home for good in 1619.

Squanto's life is an amazing story, I highly recommend you look it up sometime. He would make the trip across the Atlantic six times in his life and had the kind of a few miraculous events happen to make sure he got home.

When he heard that there was this new group living here, what was called Plymouth Colony, he went with Samuelset and Chief Massasoit to visit the colony. While he was gone back in England when he had been captured and eventually got back, there had been a terrible plague, a disease that had come in and wiped out his entire tribe.

So when he got back he was very depressed because everybody he had known was dead, all his family, all his tribe, and so he wandered about from tribe to tribe and finally was welcomed into Chief Massasoit's tribe and was living with them.

Well he finds out there's a new group living there and he could have been bitter about it, he could have been upset because they were English white men, but when he found out that they weren't offering trade for anything, he thought they were just coming to make a profit, you know, to try to do some fur trade because that's all he'd seen people do.

When he found out that's not what they were doing, they were just simply interested in how to grow crops, how to survive, and offered whatever they had as an exchange of just friendship, he thought, well these people are acting a little differently.

So he asked to go with them and he did and he was just blown away by these people and how they behaved, how they treated each other, their brotherly love for one another. They were selfless, hard-working, wanting to take care and help other people.

He became infatuated. He was just excited about this kind of people living in the territory, in the land that had once been inhabited by his tribe and his ancestors. He attended their worship services, he listened to them read the Bible and pray, and the colonists become very fond of him as well.

In fact, when he's captured by a rival tribe, Miles Standish, whose wife had also died that winter, he will lead a group to go rescue him, which eventually, after they do that and Squanto kind of negotiates with them and everything, it would lead to 50 years of peace between the colonists and the surrounding native tribes.

After they rescue him and bring him back, Bradford will show him the story of a young man who also had been put into captivity and it seemed very discouraging, but eventually God worked it all out for the good of Joseph when he was sold into slavery into Egypt by his brothers and how God brought about good and great things through that and God could too also bring about great things through Squanto and Squanto and Bradford became close friends and Squanto too became a Christian.

How amazing is it? What are the odds of all these coincidences, a word that never shows up in the Bible, that these people who are desperate to find freedom to work, to just simply worship God, to live by the Bible, desperate situation at times, would happen to land on the one spot in all of North America where the natives not only were living there but wanted nothing to do with the land and said, absolutely, you can take that land for all you want because it's thirsty.

They had it wiped out a tribe and there just happened to be somebody there who knew that land, like the back of his hand, who spoke fluent English. Man, that's a lot of coincidences, isn't it? No, no, somebody was helping them bring about this opportunity and so the colonists established very good relations with the natives through the love of Christ.

They worked to actually try to evangelize. In return, the natives worked side by side with them, giving them all the pointers of how to provide for themselves and learn how to live in the land there and if I had time, I would take you through what happened in Jamestown.

Exact opposite down there. Those men were selfish. They did not live by religious creed a lot of the time. They very much mistreated the Native Americans and in return had very bad relations from time to time.

John Smith was one of the exceptions, as was John Rolfe, whereas up here in New England, they were selfless, living by God's word. They just weren't Christian in name only. They were Christian in practice, following Christ, being disciples of him and living for him and things turned out very well and so at the harvest of 1621, they got together, most likely in October, 90 warrior Indian braves and 53 colonists for a three-day celebration.

Now, that could be a little intimidating, having 90 warrior men outnumbering your able-bodied men in the colony three to one, but those guys knew how to cook. They brought a lot of venison, enough for them to feast together for three days and that right there is usually where you will see the end of the Thanksgiving story in most of your published materials out there because it's then usually said they had a day of Thanksgiving to give thanks to the Indians, the Native Americans, for saving them, showing them all the pointers.

Well, that's not quite the end of the story. Pardon me there, let me take a drink. That's just part of the story of what happened there. You see, ships from the merchant adventurers eventually came along and arrived and one was named the Fortune and it showed up in November of 1621, so they had that celebration there in October and then a ship shows up in 1621.

Yes, can you hear me? I think you cut out for a moment. Am I here? Now I can hear you, yes. Okay, great. Okay, so problems arrived when a ship called the Fortune came in November of 1621, so they had the three-day celebration in October and then that November a new vessel arrived.

It had 37 settlers on it, many of them the separatists who had stayed in England and some who actually were still in Leiden and just couldn't afford to make the first trip. William Brewster's son, Jonathan, is amongst them, so a little bit of family reunion happening.

Well, the merchant adventurers found out from when the Mayflower had come back that they weren't in the spot they were supposed to be, so they sent new letters, new contracts, new rules to say this is how the colony is supposed to operate to help increase the output of goods to England.

Well, the contract of the colony said that no individual for now can own a plot of land for the first seven years. In fact, the plots of land are going to be rotated every year amongst the different families, so you will have a plot of land for this year that you're going to plant and work and till and harvest, hopefully, and then the next year you're going to move to a new plot of land that'll be yours to till and work and harvest, but what happens if you move to a plot that nobody took good care of, messed it all up, whatever, because they knew it didn't matter, they're not going to keep that land anyway.

Well, what happens as that incentive goes around? Additionally, everything that is harvested each year gets put into a central storehouse in the rest of the colony from which everything will be distributed evenly amongst everyone, whether you worked hard and produced or didn't work hard and produced.

Well, that could lead to some people not being very motivated to put much effort into the colony. From the very beginning, Socialism, or as William Bradford referred to it, Communalism, was trying to infiltrate America.

It was soon realized that they will not be able to harvest enough to make it through the following year, to last through the winter. Well, Governor Bradford believed, as did many of the Separatists, the Pilgrims, believed that the answer was, guess what, right here in this book.